This recording of
all of the works specified for piano that are included in the Historical
Anthology of Canadian Music covers the period of 1791 to 1939. Because
some works specified a range of possible keyboards, a few other pieces
that were played on piano, or various types of organs have been included
as well. Even during the days of New France, some of the residents were
known to have been skilled performers on keyboard instruments such as
organs, spinets, and harpsichords. Louis Jolliet (1645-1700), the famed
explorer, is reputed to have studied harpsichord in Paris for a year and
certainly played the organ for services in Quebec City on occasion. The
Livre d'orgue de Montréal, a manuscript of 540 pages of organ music,
presumably brought to Montreal by the young Sulpician cleric, Jean Girard,
in 1724 gives us some idea of the range of material used on available
organs. Although no composer is indicated for any of its 398 pieces, some
have been identified to have been by Nicolas Lebègue (1630-1702),
the King's organist, and others are in the style of organ music written
in France during the period 1675-1710. Probably none of the pieces were
actually written in Canada.

After 1759, major
changes took place in North America as the British took command. Many
if not most spinets and harpsichords went back to France as members of
the upper ruling classes left what had been New France. When F. H. Glackemeyer
(1759-1836) arrived in Canada at age 17 as a mercenary, he soon discovered
that available keyboard instruments were not of a high quality. By 1784
he was importing musical instruments, sheet music, tuning pianofortes,
and teaching viol, bass-viol, violin, and pianoforte. Perhaps it was on
a pianoforte, imported by Glackemeyer, that Charles Voyer de Poligny d'Argenson,
a Quebec City notary, conceived the Royal Fusiliers' Arrival at Quebec.
This was inspired by the arrival of the band of Prince Edward Augustus
(1767-1820) at Quebec in 1791. As was often customary with works intended
to be played by bands, the initial score was written as for piano and
then the bandmaster could transcribe the piece for the particular complement
of instruments available.

From 1820 on, Canadians
produced pieces specifically to be played on the piano. The earliest available
published composition written by a Canadian woman is The Canada Union
Waltz "By a Canadian Lady." Women often had to use pseudonyms
to get their works published in the mid-nineteenth century, but it has
been suggested that the lady in question might be Josephte Desbarats Sheppard.
The work was published both in London, England, and in the New York periodical
The Albion, volume 20. Jean-Chrysostome Brauneis (1814-1871) returned
to Montreal from three years of study in Europe and was known for his
teaching of works by Clementi, Cramer, and Czerny. He wrote the Marche
de la St-Jean-Baptiste for the patriotic society founded in 1834.
Marches and various dance idioms were the most common type of piano composition
to achieve publication in the nineteenth century. A.H. Lockett, presumably
a musician in the Halifax area for whom no biographical information has
yet been obtained, probably composed Centenary or Fancy Fair Polka
and Galop to recognize the centennial of the founding of Halifax in
1749.

George W. Strathy
(1818-1890) claimed to have been a student of Mendelssohn. By 1847 he
was teaching in Toronto piano, organ, and theory, conducting various ensembles,
and playing chamber works such as Beethoven's Archduke Trio. In
1858 he was awarded a doctorate of music by the University of Trinity
College (Toronto), and had been named "Professor of Music,"
the first North American to hold this academic title. His Magic Bell
Polka was among the early publications of the A. & S. Nordheimer
company which specialized in music publication. Antoine Dessane (1826-1873),
a graduate of the Paris Conservatory, arrived to become organist at Notre-Dame
Basilica in Quebec City in 1849. Soon after his arrival, he was delighted
while boating on the St-Charles River to hear people singing old French
tunes, sometimes with Canadian texts, while going about their daily chores.
Five of the songs that he heard, La Claire Fontaine, Dans les prisons
de Nantes, C'est la belle Françoise, Vive la Canadienne, Roule
la boule, are used in the five sections of his Quadrille Canadien.
This dance form was the basis of the later square dance. Ernest Gagnon
(1834-1915) became organist at the Quebec Basilica in 1864, and in 1865
began the publication of his famous collection of over 100 Chansons
populaires du Canada. Not only interested in French folk material,
he also wrote about the musical traditions of the Indigenous peoples of
Canada. Using the name of an Iroquois village located at the present site
of Quebec City, Stadaconé: Danse sauvage pour piano, Gagnon
wrote that he "incorporated certain stylistic aspects of native music.
These include melodic and rhythmic repetition, open fifths, and marked
accentuation patterns."

After the creation
of Canada as a nation in 1867, composers wrote many characteristic pieces
for the piano. By far the most well-known of these was Le Papillon
(The Butterfly) by Calixa-Lavallée (1842-1891). The composer
of the Canadian national anthem studied in Paris during the years 1873-75.
Not only did he have an orchestral work, Patrie, performed in 1874,
but it was probably in that year when the first publication by the Parisian
firm, L. Eveillard, happened of this piano etude. It has subsequently
been published by at least 30 publishers and remained on the study list
of the Paris Conservatory for years.

Joseph Vézina
(1849-1924), an outstanding band conductor and founder of the Quebec Symphony
Orchestra in 1903, was largely self-taught, having had only a brief period
of study with Lavallée. He wrote extensively for band, but most
of the works published were in piano versions such as this Souffle
parfumé: Valse. It begins with the Spanish-flavoured Tempo
di Bolero, followed by a brief Andantino, then four waltzes in sharply
contrasting rhythms, concluding with a Finale that recalls some of the
themes.

The beginning of the
twentieth century is considered a watershed in the history of Western
music as more adventurous composers explored the possibilities of scales
other than the major and minor diatonic forms and chords built on intervals
other than thirds. Some of the resultant works, particularly those of
Scriabin and Debussy, were being heard in Canada before 1910. That fact
can possibly help to account for the chords built with seconds, otherwise
often referred to as tone clusters which occur in Tintamarre: (The
Clangor of Bells) by J. Humfrey Anger (1862-1913), head of the theory
department at the Toronto Conservatory of Music. The work's publication
in 1911 is two years before a publication by the American composer, Henry
Cowell, who is often hailed as the first proponent of clusters. Gena Branscombe
(1881-1977), born in Picton, Ontario, won gold medals for piano and composition
at the Chicago Musical College in 1900. That year she wrote this delightful
Cavalcade: Etude for piano which she frequently used in her recitals.
It was among works for which she received rave reviews in Germany in 1909.

A Canadian pianist,
who organized the first North American festival of music by Debussy, was
Léo-Pol Morin. To him, Georges-Émile Tanguay (1893-1964)
dedicated his Pavane (1921 ), a work that is nco-classical in concept.
Instead of looking back to an earlier period, Colin McPhee (1901-1964)
wanted to find new sounds, as he wrote a concerto for various children's
instruments and percussion at the age of twelve. Silhouette is
from The Four Piano Sketches (1916), the earliest extant work of
McPhee. In the 1930s, he became an expert of Balinese music and adapted
its idiom into what is now known as minimalist composition.

James Callihou was
the pseudonym of Léo-Pol Morin (1892-1941) whom he described as
born in Edmonton of an Indian father and a French-Canadian mother, studied
in Vienna, then lived in New York and Paris, and wrote music inspired
by Indian and Inuit tunes, incorporating elements from Ravel, Bartók,
and Stravinsky. Morin first performed Suite canadienne published
as by Callihou on 19 March 1929. This was at the height of interest in
French-Canadian folksong as the basic material for composition. In the
Chanson, the tune of "Les fers aux pieds," appears. The
Gigue incorporates elements of the Canadian fiddling traditions
and the tune "Turkey in the Straw," a variant of Old Zip
Coon (1834).

Wesley Octavius Forsyth
(1839-1937) went to Leipzig for advanced musical studies where he heard
his orchestral work Romanza performed. He returned to Toronto where
he became a noted piano teacher and administrator. Most of his piano pieces
and songs are in a conservative late nineteenth-century idiom. In his
forward-looking Prelude (1929), there are shifting rhythmic metres
used and the ending features a pentatonic scale.

John J. Weinzweig
(b. 1913) was the first Canadian who insisted that composing music should
be considered as a discipline in its own right, not a sideline activity.
During his graduate musical studies at the Eastman School of Music, he
became fascinated with the works of Alban Berg. Through self-study, he
tried to work out the principles of the serial technique developed by
Berg's teacher, Arnold Schoenberg. In 1938 he wrote a short serial piece
that was dismissed by his Eastman teachers. A year later in Toronto he
wrote Dirgeling, which incorporates harmonic overtones created
by the depression of silent diminished seventh chords. These are followed
by the first presentation of its twelve-tone set in the lower line.

Twenty-seven years
before this Canadian serial piece, Rodolphe Mathieu (1890-1962) created
Canada's first atonal composition, Under the tutelage of Alfred La Liberté
who was a great admirer of Scriabin and had many of his manuscripts in
his possession, Mathieu creates in his Prelude: Sur un nom chords
built of open fifths. The tritone interval is prominent and there is no
clear tonal centre.

Canadians in homes
ranging from small sod huts, log cabins, to large stone and brick mansions,
often played hymns on whatever instrument was available, piano, melodeon,
reed organ, or possibly even a pipe organ. The latter instrument has been
chosen here to play Canadian hymns from different periods. The first group
Singing School, Canada, Resurrection, and Port Hope come from three
of the most important early tunebooks created in Canada: Stephen Humbert's
Union Harmony (Saint John, NB) whose first edition was 1801; Mark
Burnham's Colonial Harmonist, Port Hope, 1832; and Alexander Davidson's
Sacred Harmony, Toronto, 1838. Rivard (1832- 1917) produced the
most popular collection of hymn tunes with French words, Chants evangeliques
that appeared in twelve editions between 1862 and 1914. His Confie
au plus tendre des pères, Soldats du Christ, Just as I am by
George Linton (fl. 1850-1868), and Will He Not Come Back by Torontonian
John Whyte (1850-1927) clearly used homophonic, diatonic harmony, unlike
the earlier group which were under the influence of the first New England
School. That is a contrapuntal basis and sometimes quite clashing intervals
with the open fifth being the most prominent and "perfect" combination.
A refined hymn-tune style based on the variant of a small motive is used
by the organist of British Columbia, George Jennings Burnett (1867-1941).
More chromatic writing occurs in Crossing the Bar by the Toronto
musician, Albert Ham (1858-1940) and included in The Book of Praise
(1910). First published in 1933, Lambeth Road by the Toronto barrister,
James Edmund Jones (1866-1939) seems to reflect on the miserable conditions
of the unemployed in the 1930s.

Canadian composers
did not only compose religious music for organ. The dance idiom was also
popular in this medium. Burnett gave the premiere of The British African
Gavotte in Victoria on 3 May 1898. Prière by Tanguay
was published in 1921 and is reminiscent of the chromaticism and harmonies
to be found in French organ works of that period. Although Glackerneyer's
Marche was composed around 1807 for the Feast of St. Paul &
Peter, its stylistic idiom and its lack of pedal notes probably indicate
that this piece could be played on the piano.

Elaine Keillor

Elaine Keillor
has had her "adept well-schooled" piano playing described as "conveying
a sense of magic, of enchantment in music that is rare." Beginning her
public recitals at the age of two, Keillor became the youngest graduate
ever in piano performance of the Royal Conservatory of Music (Toronto)
with all of the theoretical exams completed at the age of ten. Her principal
teachers in Canada were her mother and Reginald Bedford with further coaching
from Carl Friedberg, Claudio Arrau, Harold Craxton, and Verna Jacobson.
She has toured across Canada and given recitals and orchestral performances
in North America and Europe as well as appearing regularly on the CBC,
NBC, TVOntario, radio and television programs.

In 1976 Keillor
obtained the Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Toronto and
has taught at Toronto, York, Queen's, McMaster, and Carleton Universities.
She is principal investigator of the Canadian Musical Heritage Society,
an organization devoted to the research, editing, and publishing of
Canadian music composed before 1950. Dr. Keillor has written articles
on many aspects of Canadian music, and the monograph John Weinzweig:
The Radical Romantic of Canada (1994). As a performer and chamber
musician Keillor has given many premieres of new Canadian repertoire.
Her recent recordings, praised for their "impeccable pianism," include
Legend of the First Rabbit (Studea Musica 1999) and Views
of the Piano Sonata (CSCD-1002). In 1999 Dr. Keillor was the inaugural
recipient of the Canadian Women's Mentor Award, Arts and Culture category.